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Originally Posted by Boisebro
Boise had an electric trolley system that connected the towns throughout the Treasure Valley from 1906 to 1928.
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Many of the old rail lines are still embedded under downtown streets, but the only reminder above ground is a kiosk where the old South Street Station was located:
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Boise is currently considering a new fixed rail streetcar system, starting with a downtown loop and eventually expanding throughout the valley, but it's still a long way from reality.
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I was born in Boise and still have a lot of family in the area. I knew they'd had a little rail "back in the day," but had no idea it tied together Boise, Middleton, Caldwell, Nampa and points in-between. Looks like it even went to roughly where the airport is now (or maybe it was just to Union Station - hard say from that map). I know that for a big fire in Nampa, they had to bring a fire brigade from Boise via what sounded like a commuter rail track running at speeds - at that time - were among the fastest ever in America - something astounding like - wait for it - 59mph!
My grandmother lived on farmland just outside Caldwell when I was growing up. My mother and her siblings just sold that property recently, after a decade of dithering about what to do with it. My brother lives in the North End, I have a cousin in Meridian, my parents now live in Middleton, and I have an aunt by marriage and a different blood uncle in Nampa, and a great-aunt out in Owyhee County (her husband was my grandmother's brother and a semi-famous horseman). My grandmother and her brother grew up in Silver City and Murphy - I still like visiting Silver City in the summer months just to see an old American mining-town-now-ghost-town. Silver City was the first city in Idaho to have electric lights - I minor miracle at the time. Now it doesn't have any electricity except what residents get from private solar panels.
Quote:
Originally Posted by left of center
Chicago's surface lines (in contrast to the elevated lines) used to be one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the world, with over 500 miles of track and hundreds of different marked routes. Ridership declined around WWII, and the CTA eventually absorbed the private companies that operated the lines. By the 1950's, the rails were being ripped up or buried under asphalt as buses began to replace the streetcars.
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When doing street reconstruction it's still relatively common to see streetcar tracks pulled up as part of the work. I live in River North and usually work in the greater Loop area. Just in the past couple of years I've seen tracks pulled out of Clark Street, Wells Street, and Franklin Street, as well as a few points north of downtown.
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Originally Posted by iheartthed
Some systems were bought by a private company and deactivated. It was done with the goal of selling buses.
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Buses were considered a modern alternative to streetcars. Streetcars were dangerous - a danger that modern lightrail still runs into because when properly designed and on straight runs they're so quiet and sometimes they "sneak up on" pedestrians. Plus buses can go around obstructions. Trolley-buses, to me, seem like a good combo - less pollution, quieter than either diesel buses or steel wheels, some ability to move around obstructions. Boston's Silver Line uses combo trolley/diesel buses, although they require more time switching between the two power sources than would seem to be ideal.
I'd love to see Chicago implement better-designed combo trolley/diesel-hybrid buses, especially downtown where all the diesel buses contribute a lot of particulates to the air. They CTA is using a lot of hybrid buses these days, which helps alot, and even is experimenting with all-electric buses, which seems like a good alternative if the range and charging times can be kept reasonable. Alternatively, they could use wireless charging from in-the-street chargers - that would be cool. It'd be kind of like trolley buses, but without the unsightly overhead wires.
I don't fully buy into the most conspiracy-minded interpretations of automobile companies' buying and dismantling streetcar systems - many of those systems were functionally bankrupt at the time anyway and buses kept them closer to solvency - although as the conversion of transit companies to public services demonstrates, even that didn't cure all the financial ills they suffered because of competition from personal automobiles and grade-separately rapid transit (elevated and/or subway systems) in many cities.